by Clare Kauter
There was Tim’s famous temper coming to the surface.
“Tim,” said Adam calmly, “tell us what you can.”
I was furious, and I could see James was as well. How was Adam remaining so calm through all of this? Tim had been fucking us around all day! He clearly knew this guy and had suspected him from the beginning. Why wouldn’t he have told us? I would have thought he’d do anything to rescue his niece as soon as possible.
Tim inhaled deeply then exhaled, looking resigned. “OK,” he said. “But this doesn’t leave this room.”
Chapter Nineteen
As if today wasn’t already melodramatic enough.
“Before we start,” Adam said, “are you sure you want a cop present for this?”
Tim thought for a moment. “Yeah, it should be OK. I’ll skip over the more colourful bits.”
“Thanks,” said James flatly.
“Alright. Continue,” said Adam.
Tim took another deep breath, looking like right at this moment he’d rather be anywhere else than here. “Well, Bill Reagan... He’s Gracie’s father, as you might have guessed.”
“I asked you if it could be her father and you said no,” said Adam.
“I didn’t think it could be,” said Tim. “I went to a lot of trouble to arrange it so he couldn’t find us.”
“Which means you knew he was a psycho who would try to come after you,” said James. “Why wasn’t he suspect number one from the start?”
“It’s been eight years since we came out here. I thought – I don’t know, I thought he’d have given up looking by now. Besides, I’ve made plenty of new enemies in the meantime. It seemed more logical to start with them.”
I guess that kind of made sense. James still looked pissed, though, and I didn’t blame him. Why was Tim being so secretive? I would have thought he’d have wanted to explore every avenue. It wasn’t like him to be so sloppy. Maybe his pain meds were clouding his judgment.
Adam nodded. “What are we dealing with?”
“He’s psychotic. Owns casinos and has a bunch of thugs running around doing his bidding. You know the type. Rich and scary.”
“I worked in one of his casinos,” Ellie said. “And, um… Well, he took a liking to me. We dated for a while. I didn’t really know… It took me a while to realise what a psychopath he was. He’s super controlling. Likes beating people up. Big fan of the second amendment. When I got pregnant I decided I needed to get away – that’s not the kind of guy you want your kid to grow up around, you know? I called Tim and he came and got me while Bill was out one night. We hid down south for a few months while we sorted everything out. Once we got everything together we came out here and lived in Sydney. I had Gracie and then Tim got a job with you guys so we moved up here.”
I guess that meant the balloon and flowers were meant for Tim – the ‘you can’t get rid of me that easily’ message made a lot more sense now. The creepy bow was probably just to freak Tim out.
“Is that the whole story?” Adam asked.
Tim and Ellie hesitated, looking at each other briefly.
“We borrowed a little money when we left,” said Tim. “Alimony, you could call it.”
James shook his head in disgusted disbelief.
“So you think that’s what he wants?”
Tim shrugged. “I don’t know. He hasn’t asked for it. Maybe he just wants us to suffer. I don’t know what to think.”
“Do you think Gracie is safe with him?”
Tim turned to Ellie. “You know him best.”
“She’ll be OK for a little while, until something happens that makes him lose his temper.”
“I think we can assume that something already made him lose his temper seeing as he dumped Ralph’s faceless corpse on my front step earlier,” I said.
James gave me a look of disbelief. Oh, right. I wasn’t meant to say that. It might cause them to panic. Which was something I definitely wasn’t doing right now. Breathe in, 2, 3, 4, hold, 2, 3, 4…
“She’ll charm him, though,” I said, trying to convince myself as much as anyone else. “Right? Everyone likes Gracie. He’s not going to want to hurt her. She’s his own flesh and blood. Maybe he just wants to take her away from you.”
“At least we know who we’re looking for now,” said Adam, standing.
“I’m sorry,” said Tim. “Really. I just couldn’t risk telling anyone in case it wasn’t him. We’re – we’re kind of on the run from him.”
Adam nodded. “I know. Still dumb, but I understand.” He turned to face me and James. “Let’s go.”
We walked back to the car, Adam and James both placing phone calls about Bill Reagan to their respective offices. Neither mentioned anything about Reagan’s relationship to Tim. They both just played the Ralph angle. I heard James say he wasn’t sure what Tim’s connection to Reagan was but that he must have been investigating him back in America. I was relieved that James wasn’t going to dob Tim in for the stolen money or highlight his connection to Reagan. James couldn’t be all bad.
Twenty minutes later we were back at McKenzie’s house sifting through the information we’d been sent on Bill Reagan, trying to come up with some sort of clue about where he’d taken Gracie. We weren’t having a lot of luck.
He was a bad guy, that much was obvious, but nothing ever seemed to stick. Witnesses went missing, or forgot what they had seen and retracted their statements, or just didn’t exist in the first place. People didn’t go against this guy. He’d never even made it to court. Amazing what a little money (or a lot) and a few thugs could accomplish.
“Anyone want a drink?” James asked. “Something to eat?”
Adam didn’t appear to hear him, but I certainly did. I was starving. Stress made me hungry. (As did boredom. And pretty much everything else. I was perpetually hungry.) “Yes!” I said and followed him to the kitchen.
James was nearly as terrible a cook as me, but luckily he had a box of Choculence cookies and a big tin of Cadbury hot chocolate powder in the pantry so no actual cooking was required. Being the fancy fellow he was, he tipped the cookies onto a plate and turned on his espresso machine to froth the milk for the hot chocolates. He took a bottle of hazelnut milk from the fridge and my jaw dropped. That stuff was, like, $9 a bottle! The joys of being a billionaire, I guess. McKenzie lived a life of excess. I bet he even bought avocadoes when they weren’t on sale.
“Man, that stuff is like liquid gold.”
He grinned. “I know, right? It’s the best. It makes hot chocolate taste like Nutella.”
I think it was at about that moment that we both realised how horrendously dull that conversation was so we fell silent while James frothed the milk for our drinks. I found my mind wandering again, thinking about Gracie and Bill Reagan and Harcourt and the kiss and –
“Charlie,” said James as he added the chocolate powder to two mugs, “can I ask you a question?”
Um, no. My mind was too busy racing with thoughts of anything and everything. I didn’t have time to answer his questions.
“Sure,” I said. Because my mouth was a traitor.
“Why exactly did you whisper ‘Trump’ and figure out who was responsible for the kidnapping while you were making out with me?” James asked.
“Technically we weren’t making out. I’m pretty sure your lips have to do more than just brush together, not to mention the lack of tongue involved. If anything, we were just ‘close breathing’.”
My lip curled at what I’d just said. That didn’t sound appealing at all. In fact, that sounded like something you’d get arrested for.
“So it was good for you, too.”
I smiled. “I didn’t mean to make it sound that gross. It was nice and all, but I wouldn’t call it making out, you know? We barely tickled lips.”
“Where are you getting all these terms from?”
Well, James, I’d quite like to know that myself. What the fuck, brain? Tickled lips? Actually, that would make kind of a cool ba
nd name. I made a mental note to bring it up with Jo/Lea/Celia – we’d make an awesome angry girl band. Wow, my thoughts had definitely gone off track. I realised James was looking at me expectantly. Shit. What had we been talking about again?
“Um, where were we?”
James looked a little concerned. “Are you OK?”
“Yeah, I just got a little lost.”
“Thinking about rubbing orifices?”
“Eww, James! That was way worse than mine!”
He smiled. “Anyway, back to the original question. Why did you whisper ‘Trump’ to me? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t part of your seduction ritual.”
“No, you’re right. My seduction ritual involves human sacrifice.”
“Naturally.”
“Only during a full moon, though, so you’re safe.”
“Good to know. But you still haven’t answered my question.”
“The joke about Donald Trump reminded me of Reagan,” I explained. “At the brunch thing he asked me how I felt about Trump and I joked to Adam about Tim knowing him because of the accent. When I remembered that I thought about that the fact that Reagan was hanging out with Ralph, and it seemed like a good idea to look into him.”
James nodded. “Right. So it was nothing to do with the kiss?”
“We didn’t really get started on the kiss.”
“We should rectify that at some point,” he said.
My heart sped up. “Sure. Maybe after we find the missing child.”
“Yeah, of course,” said James. “Priorities.”
“It’s definitely on the to-do list, though. I’ll pencil it in on the schedule.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Pencil it in? Stop making it sound so appealing.”
“It’s just my natural organisational allure.”
He smiled. “Save the seduction for later.”
Suddenly it seemed like the room had grown very hot. Global warming hotspot? Unlikely. James was having an effect on me, whether I liked it or not. “Only when I have a willing victim ready for the ritual,” I said, managing to do an OK job at concealing my sudden rise in temperature.
James smiled, but then grew serious. “I know you’re only joking, but I feel like just to clarify I should say that I don’t condone murdering people.”
“Not even in service of our lord and master Satan?”
He smiled. “Not even then.”
“Wow, what a narc,” I said. “You wearing a wire or something?”
Oops. I’d meant that as a playful, offhand comment, but I could feel the panic rising. What if he was? What if Harcourt was listening in on this little exchange? God, I didn’t even want to consider that possibility. Of course, you probably think that I was being epically paranoid and borderline delusional – who the fuck cared about what I had to say? – but I could have sworn I saw McKenzie’s smile flicker at my question.
He handed me a hot chocolate. “We’d better get back to it.” He paused. “Researching, I mean, not…”
Well, great. Now it wasn’t weird at all.
James picked up the tray of biscuits and we made our way back to the dining room where Adam was still hard at work researching. Not for the first time today, I felt like a piece of shit. Here I was getting all bent up over a stupid boy when there was a little girl out there being held hostage by her psychotic crime boss dad. Good job, Charlie. Someone definitely had their priorities in order.
Adam hadn’t made any progress in our absence and things were looking pretty dire.
That is, until McKenzie’s phone rang.
He took the call in the kitchen and then returned to us. “That was Harcourt. I gave him Reagan’s phone number earlier and they couldn’t get a location, but it looks like he’s turned it back on because they’ve had a hit. They know where he is.”
“That’s great!” I said.
“Harcourt wants me to head down there. He said to pick up Ellie on the way. They’re pretty sure Gracie will be there and he wants to have her mother there to look after her once they get her out.” He paused. “I’m not meant to tell you guys where I’m going.”
Adam nodded. “Of course. You better go.”
“I’m sorry,” said James to me. I shrugged. I didn’t care if I was there or not, as long as Grace was safe.
“Go,” I said. “Call us when you find her.”
James hurried to the door. When he got there, he hesitated in the doorway, seeming to contemplate something. He turned. “It’s a warehouse down by the Tanner,” he said before hurrying out to his garage.
After the door shut behind him, I made my way into the lounge room wordlessly, giving Arnold a little scratch and collecting the tray of biscuits on the way. (Hey, I was hungry. Stress really takes it out of a person.) Adam followed me, watching from the doorway as I plonked on the couch and inhaled a couple of cookies. I didn’t make eye contact with Adam as I ate, but I could still feel the judgment radiating off him. He was more of a veggie sticks and hummus man than a biscuit guy. Something to do with the medical degree, I guess. Or the ability to function as a responsible adult.
The silence stretched on a little too long and I had to break it.
“It’s the stress,” I said.
“You must be very stressed all the time given your general diet.”
“You have no idea.”
“Right.”
I hit play on the remote and continued the episode of House. I glanced at Adam. “You going to join me?”
He walked over silently and sat next to me on the couch. We let the episode play for a moment.
“Is this what you do when you’re at the hospital? Solve medical cases?” I asked. He rolled his eyes. “You and House have similar bedside manners.”
“Whereas you have the kind of winning personality that charms everyone you meet,” he replied.
“How dare you! People love me.”
“Remind me again, how many people have tried to murder you in the last six months?”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, James seems to like me.”
“I think ‘seems to’ is the operative term there.”
I paused. Should I tell him what happened by the pool? No, that would seem weird and like I was being overly defensive and –
“We sort of kissed near the pool!”
Well, shit.
“Sort of?”
“Yes, but then I whispered ‘Trump’ in his face and it kind of killed the moment.”
“Captain Seduction strikes again.”
“I’m, like, 60% sure he’s not just pretending.”
“Well, I’m convinced.”
I huffed. “I’ve known him for a long time. I don’t think he has it in him to double-cross me.”
“Really? Because when you were screaming at him earlier it certainly seemed like you thought he had it in him.”
He was right, of course, but I didn’t want to think about that. I wanted to think that James was 100% honest and trustworthy, like I’d always thought. I had no reason to think that he wasn’t. No concrete reason, at least.
I shifted uncomfortably, remembering the lie I’d told James about Adam and me. Why had Adam backed me up? Only a couple of hours earlier he’d fired me. It wasn’t like we were friends anymore. And yet he’d corroborated my story without hesitation. I groaned inwardly. It would be nice to know just once where I stood with someone.
“So, Gracie should be back home soon,” I said, very subtly changing the subject.
“What a subtle subject change,” Adam said. (See? Told you.) “But yes, I guess she will.”
“So we can relax now, right? Get some rest. Because it’s over.”
When Adam didn’t answer, I glanced over at him. He was staring blankly at the TV, though I doubted he was actually watching it. He was a doctor – he’d probably analysed the patient’s symptoms and figured out how the episode was going to end after about two seconds. Something was worrying him. And he wasn’t the only one.
Something about the
GPS phone location clue wasn’t sitting right with me and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was. I stared at the screen but I couldn’t concentrate on what was happening. My mind was sifting through everything that had happened today, trying to figure out what was bothering me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Maybe it just seemed anticlimactic after all our searching that the police had figured it out and I wasn’t needed. Or maybe it was because it seemed too good to be true that the police had been able to get Reagan’s exact location because he was dumb enough to give his phone number to a cop.
I sighed. “I don’t know what it is, Adam, but I can’t help but feel that we’re missing something. They haven’t found her yet. Do you think we should keep looking through the info we have just in case she isn’t at the warehouse?”
Adam turned to me. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“I must be learning.”
“About time.”
We walked back into the kitchen area and sat at the dining table poring over the info on our phones. Neither of us knew what we were looking for. We just wanted to find something new.
I wondered why James had given us the location. Was it possible that he didn’t trust Harcourt? Did he think Harcourt might be leading the investigation astray? It certainly wouldn’t surprise me – I was fairly sure Harcourt would throw a case in favour of whoever could pay him the most money. Was James suspicious of him too? Did that mean he was on our side in looking for Topher? No, I decided. I was reading too much into it. Maybe he didn’t think Harcourt was good at his job and wanted us to check on other leads just in case. Or maybe he just felt bad keeping information from us.
What about this latest development – apart from the fact that the information had come from Harcourt – was niggling at me? I grabbed a notepad and pen from the kitchen bench and wrote down everything we knew so far.
Grace taken by psycho dad.
Right. OK, so we knew the guy who’d done it. We thought he’d probably done it to get back at Tim and Ellie. We knew he’d murdered Ralph because, well, psycho. Maybe Ralph knew something. That part didn’t really matter, because right now we just needed to know where he’d taken Grace. I hadn’t come across anything that seemed like a clue. I just had a feeling in my gut that she wasn’t down in the warehouses.
